D&D General Demetrios1453 Plays the Gold Box Games

[Andvari]

I played through Champions of Krynn, Death Knights of Krynn and The Dark Queen of Krynn a couple of years ago. I didn't max my PCs' stats, but I re-rolled until they had an 18 in their primary stat. The only real issues I had were having to retry a battle against a death knight in Death Knights of Krynn several times, and two fights vs. Draconians and other nasties near the very end of The Dark Queen of Krynn (had to lower the difficulty from Veteran for those two battles).

When I tried to play through the Pools series, I gave up in Secret of the Silver Blades, as slogging through endless passageways that looked the same and fighting endless random monsters got too boring. But I recommend all of the Krynn games as well as Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds. My favourite two were Champions of Krynn and The Dark Queen of Krynn.

Overall, I really love these games. The main issue is when your characters have leveled up some in the early games, before they perfected the interface, and you manually have to refill your party's hit point bars by using lots of cure light wounds, manually casting one at a time, then manually selecting them, one at a time, to re-memorize, resting, then repeating the process, which may be necessary quite a few times to restore the whole party. In later games, they fortunately add a Fix command to automate the process (the more powerful healing spells also appear).

The combat is excellent and fast, especially in later games, once you learn the interface shortcuts. And you always sit there on the edge of your seat, when disintegrate, or some other nasty spell goes off, hoping your PCs will make the save.

Weird bugs seem to appear when GBC is used, so I've avoided using it, despite it having a lot of great features.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I played through Champions of Krynn, Death Knights of Krynn and The Dark Queen of Krynn a couple of years ago. I didn't max my PCs' stats, but I re-rolled until they had an 18 in their primary stat. The only real issues I had were having to retry a battle against a death knight in Death Knights of Krynn several times, and two fights vs. Draconians and other nasties near the very end of The Dark Queen of Krynn (had to lower the difficulty from Veteran for those two battles).

When I tried to play through the Pools series, I gave up in Secret of the Silver Blades, as slogging through endless passageways that looked the same and fighting endless random monsters got too boring. But I recommend all of the Krynn games as well as Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds. My favourite two were Champions of Krynn and The Dark Queen of Krynn.

Overall, I really love these games. The main issue is when your characters have leveled up some in the early games, before they perfected the interface, and you manually have to refill your party's hit point bars by using lots of cure light wounds, manually casting one at a time, then manually selecting them, one at a time, to re-memorize, resting, then repeating the process, which may be necessary quite a few times to restore the whole party. In later games, they fortunately add a Fix command to automate the process (the more powerful healing spells also appear).

The combat is excellent and fast, especially in later games, once you learn the interface shortcuts. And you always sit there on the edge of your seat, when disintegrate, or some other nasty spell goes off, hoping your PCs will make the save.

Weird bugs seem to appear when GBC is used, so I've avoided using it, despite it having a lot of great features.

Huh, I've never had an issue with GBC. Was it an earlier version you were using?

I agree about SotSB, but I've managed to power through it, since I like PoD so much. And I definitely disagree concerning DQoK; the middle section, where its endless fights with dark wizards and enhanced draconians, really bogs the game down, worse than even SotSB's endless corridors...

 

[TheHand]

I’m loving this thread! The Goldbox series, particularly Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds have a special place in my heart, back when I first played them on an Apple II(!!). I’ve actually adapted and run the TTRPG version “Ruins of Adventure” about 4 times over the years, as recently as 2 years ago (converting it to 5e) and using props out of the old journal books. Thank you for taking me back down nostalgia lane!

 

[TheHand]

I agree about the posters talking about Silverblades being a slog, it was a huge let down from one of my favorite entries: Azure Bonds. I found the higher level entries in most of these games kind of unfun, though Pools of Darkness goes so absolutely bonkers in its extreme power shenanigans that it edged out Silver Blades.
The lower level Dragonlance ones are good and I think the Savage Frontier games are underrated and often overlooked, probably because they came out at the end of the gold box run, when the game engine was really getting creaky and new games like Eye of the Beholder were imminent.

It was really cool that they released the whole gold box construction set game at the end, I had a lot of fun building my own little adventures and monsters.

Oh and the strange Buck Rogers ones… exist!

 

[Thomas Shey]

It tells you something that, even though I probably played PoR 35 years ago or more, I still knew you were talking about those ruddy trolls earlier...

 

[Andvari]

I’m loving this thread! The Goldbox series, particularly Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds have a special place in my heart, back when I first played them on an Apple II(!!). I’ve actually adapted and run the TTRPG version “Ruins of Adventure” about 4 times over the years, as recently as 2 years ago (converting it to 5e) and using props out of the old journal books. Thank you for taking me back down nostalgia lane!

I drew a few maps for when I ran Ruins of Adventure.

Spoiler: New Phlan

Spoiler: Temple of Ilmater (before its conversion to a Temple of Bane)

And used Worldographer to make a hexmap for the wilderness.

Spoiler: Ruins of Adventure Wilderness Map

 

[Spectral Anomaly]

I’ve actually adapted and run the TTRPG version “Ruins of Adventure” about 4 times over the years, as recently as 2 years ago (converting it to 5e) and using props out of the old journal books.

Please tell us you handed the players the code wheels then gave them some sort of word puzzle to figure out!

And yes, thank you OP for doing this! This is bringing back some great memories.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Please tell us you handed the players the code wheels then gave them some sort of word puzzle to figure out!

At the start of every session, he asks a code wheel security question, and if the players fail three times, he shuts down the game and goes home.

 

[TheHand]

Please tell us you handed the players the code wheels then gave them some sort of word puzzle to figure out!

Yes, I did for some of the secret codes., like Sokal Keep! If I had to suffer through that damn wheel so did they!!

 

[Andvari]

I agree about SotSB, but I've managed to power through it, since I like PoD so much. And I definitely disagree concerning DQoK; the middle section, where it's endless fights with dark wizards and enhanced draconians, really bogs the game down, worse than even SotSB's endless corridors...

I derive much enjoyment from the fancy fireworks resulting from the deaths of enchanted draconians.